


tranquility base logs

by britpop



Category: Arctic Monkeys, Last Shadow Puppets
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-07 16:18:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 4,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15911847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/britpop/pseuds/britpop
Summary: alex, the general manager at ‘tranquility base hotel & casino,’ is keeping a log while a musician visits.





	1. 5.36pm on day I believe should be hotter than it is

**Author's Note:**

> this is the first am / tlsp fic iv ever written, & i was writing it as something to pass the time but decided to share it here also x enjoy

The sun is beginning to shine it’s light upon the metallic edges of the base. I’m concerned about the temperature increasing, making the buildings hotter than a leather car strap in summer heat. Nobody has yet to complain but that doesn’t mean that they won’t, thankfully the slanted roofs shade the fake wood exterior of the casino well enough to avoid a scathing hot surface.  
Something a little concerning happened today regarding the habitual misinformation I spread to visitors during tours. Usually I point out which constellations are visible from our luxury rooms despite not knowing the first thing about astronomy, and today a mystic type in Stevie Nicks drab interrupted my tirade of useless information to correct me.  
She said to me as she pressed herself to my side; “Young man, I think you ought to know that that is in fact ‘Capricornus.’” She had then looked up at me with flying saucer eyes and said, after some careful consideration, “You’re a Capricorn, aren’t you, boy ?”  
“Yes,” I had said.  
“Well, it is only during these times where you can see your sign immortalised in the stars.”  
I had stopped fulfilling my profession at this point, I was now gazing at the triangular collection of stars illuminating my personality like a flickering neon light. Like the ones that hung from the roofs of the cheap motels back on Earth. It reminded me of some kind of sleaze. A sort of glamour I hadn’t felt in years that you can only find in the seediest of places.

And, you know, that makes me wonder. What is it that inspires people to go out to these far fetched places like Tranquility ? It still seems like I’m hallucinating it all. I walk out onto the silver platform to greet visitors as they land and I think; “You’re in space, Alex. You’re really up there.” It can’t get any higher than this. I have a song in my head, it’s a space age type of a thing. It’s a song that says “I danced myself right out the womb.” I wonder if Marc Bolan thought that one day someone could really be born out here in space. We haven’t gotten there yet, no, not even close. Pregnant women aren’t allowed to come all the way out here, what if she goes into labor ? If she went into labor it’d be my responsibility to deliver the child, and I don’t know what I’d do with the afterbirth. It’s sort of like that Freddy Krueger movie where he is born instead of the baby, what is it ? Is that New Nightmare or The Dream Child ?

I think I’ll have to rewatch the series now.


	2. 8.30pm on a restless tuesday

I flipped through every magazine I could find on the base today looking for a flyer I remember tucking into a lifestyle article. It was a design I had come up with to advertise a musician who will be staying with us for about a month, he had a really interesting name that sounded more like a bar of chocolate than the name of a real person. In fact everything about him seemed to be more on the fictional side of reality, I had scrolled through his Instagram for quite a long time when I was told about the event. He’s a big deal down there, but I’m a big deal up here, and even though he looks like Paul McCartney if Paul McCartney decided to become a mechanic, he can’t step me up on the popularity scale up here. I’m a big name in deep space. What’s he gonna do ? What does he play ? What the hell was his name ? If he’s an Elvis impersonator I will personally nuke this hotel. The real big bang was me lighting the fuse on a stick of dynamite because I have to tiredly watch another fucking Elvis Presley impersonator.   
Anyway, I couldn’t find the flyer. This meant I had to go pelting through the event planner that’s kept up by the woman at the front desk, who quite frankly, I cannot stand. Her handwriting is indistinguishable from that of a freezing penguin’s in the arctic. But I did find him, you’ll be happy to know, and his name is Miles Kane. Sounds like a some kind of sugar infused monstrosity, but I was right to think he’s a little bit fit. 

Or at least it seem that way based off the event advert. You know how these days Photoshop or what’s it can fix even the shade of your skin, it’s a bit alarming actually. I remember meeting a model years ago, way before we got the instillation that makes this building freezing cold, and I remember her showing me her ad in a magazine. Her skin was about fifteen shades lighter than it actually is, and though she expressed a certain degree of dismay about it she seemed to understand that that’s just how the industry works. Either way it set me off completely from being able to enjoy the bodies I see even on television. I guess what I’m saying here is that although Miles Kane appears very attractive and quite slender, I highly doubt that that’s the case. And I especially doubt he is as kind and rambunctious as his smile makes him seem.


	3. 3.22am on an endless night

I couldn’t sleep for the flashing lights coming in through the casino, sometimes it’s hard to keep your focus on the prospect of the dreamworld when a carousel is sounding off outside. I’m genuinely concerned with this singer type that’s supposed to be arriving. We aren’t too used to having live music here, I don’t know how well the visitors will take to the illusion being somewhat broken.   
Our entire base here is virtual, everything works in a coded manner, it’s something that I can’t even begin to explain to you. I just work here. However I can tell you that noises above excited shouting tend to fuck with the holograms, they begin to flicker & malfunction if some kind of high frequency hits them. I don’t know how it works, I think it’s like when you stick your finger underneath a running faucet. You know how the water will curl around your finger tip, curving the flow ? It’s almost like that, except in the early days that would electrocute customers. We’ve fixed that.   
I used to play music, back in my day before the technology age really took over the whole scene. I didn’t make it big in the latter days of rock’n’roll because it didn’t sit right with me to be playing to a screen. This Miles guy played around then, too, from what I can tell. I suppose he must be a bit more progressive than I, if he is real that is. It’s hard to trust your eyes nowadays. I evacuated as though it was war times in an impoverished nation when I realised there was an entire section of the universe not yet inhabited by the nausiances I had come to know. 

By God, I fought tooth and nail to get this job but all I do is lie around here and complain. I thought virtual reality would be like television. I didn’t think about how many takes you have to do before you hit the screens.


	4. 4.35pm on a dreary day

I’m running on about an hour of sleep awaiting the arrival of a new influx of visitors, I terrified myself with the thought that Miles was coming today. Although he isn’t my fear of him electrified me into work mode. I’ve already personally vacuumed every inch of the main building much to the delight of the cleaning staff, everybody loves it when I’m working off of sleep deprivation alone. I get more done that way but nonetheless I am still not allowed to talk about vinyl.   
The last time I did that the floor manager threatened to tell Paul Weller himself that I wouldn’t shut up about The Style Council’s “Blue Café” record (a seminal album that you should certainly listen to, thank you very much), as he knows Weller personally. And I just couldn’t bare the embarrassment of someone like him knowing I’m more than a little fixated on his awkward yankee phase.   
Right now I’m seated on an uncomfortable stool that’s leaning backwards at an angle against the window and I can see the lights of the spacecraft carrying the next 100 guests. It scares me to think that aboard one of those metal monsters sometime soon will be a man who may or may not be an Elvis Presley impersonator. 

I can’t get the thought of that man out of my head. It’s something about the way he left the top three buttons of his Pretty Green shirt undone, or maybe the way his head is cocked slightly upwards accentuating his jawline spectacularly. Or actually, that effortless five o’clock shadow that he’s currently baring. That could very well be part of the charm that keeps him coming back to mind, there’s something that’s just so cool about that. Not giving enough of a fuck to shave … I should try it.


	5. 6.20pm on the day i gave up on that shit

See what I’d done was I’d decided, you know, if this Miles guy can sport some facial hair just fine there’s no reason why I can’t either. So I stole some clippers from the last shipment of bedroom essentials and excitedly began to wait for something to show.  
Our blessed secretary, Dorothy, asked me nearly every day if I was doing alright as she took the hair as some sort of sign of my inevitable downfall. Everybody has money on the date of my demise, they think these copious martinis just might get me. But they haven’t killed me yet, have they ? So I’ll have another.  
Anyways, I grew some facial hair and kept it all nice and trimmed. I thought, ‘well this goes great with the hotel manager aesthetic, doesn’t it ?’ I waltzed around the base with that on my face for several days, feeling like I was John Lennon, y’know ? Like I was invincibly cool.  
It wasn’t until I received yet another email double checking that I was prepared for the tantalising Miles Kane that I realised maybe some people can’t pull off this look without seeming vaguely like a paedophile.  
So bye bye, badman. 

**Alexander Turner**  
to: **Rob Coxon**  
Re: **Miles Kane @ Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino**

The base itself and all it’s employees are more than ready and very excited for Mr. Kane to arrive. We’ve set up the stage to be in tip top condition and have already accommodated the reserved suits to any needs necessary for a comforting stay.  
The hotel is beyond prepared and calm, I however, am anticipating the Mr. Kane with all the joy one could find in the heart of a teenager girl looking up at Harry Styles. I eagerly await the arrival of the party. 

Always yours,  
Turner


	6. 4.00pm on the day of reckoning

I’m standing in my modified uniform. It’s a golden ensemble, suit, vest, & flares. The whole shebang. I had it personally made when I realised I had the money to invest in something better than the drab outfits we’re practically condemned to. The shoes are Chelsea style boots with a higher heel, I think they’re Steve Madden, I can’t remember now.   
The ship’s just landed. 

**7.00pm**

Well. I’m pleased to inform you that he is in fact real. He is actually so real that I can hardly bare the thought of having to confront him further.   
He has this accent that just flies off his tongue like a frisbee, and his jeans are purposefully tailored to end before the ankle so he waltzes around in his little slip ons, ankles showing, doing a little dance across the landing pad.   
He danced towards me when he got off, and he went “Mistah Turnah, I’d assyume. I’m Miles, is luhvleh tah meet ya.”   
I was amazed to say the least. The Stooges’ ‘Raw Power’ was playing from his jet as he said this to me and I was shocked by the display. It takes balls to dance like that to The Stooges, in shoes without socks no less.   
I showed him around, he kept talking to me about a Scott Walker song that apparently the hotel reminds him of, and I was trying desperately to claw at my memory for the name. He told me he’s the ‘king’s king, if ya know what I mean.’ And I don’t. He later elaborated that Scott Walker was David Bowie’s hero, therefore he was the end all, be all. I was deeply troubled.  
Miles Kane is like if Ziggy Stardust had a better haircut. Miles Kane is like if the stars blew up in your face. Miles Kane makes me deeply anxious and concerned for my reputation.


	7. 9am on the day after the end of the world

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> somehow i feel like this one is a bit out of character, but i get caught up in how romantic a hotel in space can be. 
> 
> thank you for all your lovely comments it means the world to me !

I awoke early today to tend to my duties and I found ‘Mistah Myles Kayne’ sitting behind the front desk, idly flirting with the person on the other end of the phone. I was exhausted, I was up all night listening to various Scott Walker projects and so I hardly flinched when I saw him there. I guess I thought I was dreaming, the way the lights lining the desk shine up at him I thought he was a figment if my imagination.  
I took him in for a moment there, before I stopped him. I want to know where he comes from, his thin fingers were tapping away at the wooden counter and I noticed the tightness of his white jeans. It had be someone else to get him, I was handcuffed to his body at this point.  
When Lola, the penguin in the cold with the awful handwriting, stopped him I was besides myself. She had gently removed his hand from the receiver by the wrist, it was a moving sight when he turned to look at me from over his shoulder. He smiled, and when he smiled I swear a little bit of sunlight shone through.  
I think I’m getting smitten. I always did think Paul McCartney was a little cute, and he’s prettier than him, really. He really is something else. 

He came up behind me after that, slid his arm around my waist to give me a tight side hug and smiled the criminal smile again.  
“What’s on the menu today, love ?” He talks to me like I’m some bird at a cheap bar he’s trying to pick up. I’m not gonna lie to you and say I don’t like it.  
Anyways, I showed him around the place, gave him my usual tour guide spiel, and he seemed a little disinterested. He kept talking to me about wrestlers, someone from way back when, Finn Balor. Something about how he was a WWE Superstar and how he named one of his records after his finishing moves …  
I wonder if I’ve always been too effeminate for this kind of stuff, I’m not sure. I tell him I used to love the idea of leather jackets and motorbikes, cruising full speed down a long expanse of desert with a girl holding onto me. I told him for a long while that used to be my dream, but then I realised I wasn’t cut out to be tough.  
He had said something to me that I thought was fairly interesting. He went; “Me, I just fancied myself a Vespa with all those rear view mirrors, yew know the ones. Like in ‘Quadrophenia.’” 

He’s definitely a mod. I guess I could call myself a rocker. Or I could have. Right now I’m lying in my bedroom, a record is on playing softly a song that goes a little like this: 

_“Your body is a searchlight, my poverty is revealed, I would like to try your charity until you cry “Now you must try my greed.”_

I wonder if my ‘poverty’ shows. I wonder if he’s secretly adorned with all the jewels and riches someone of his type typically is. He comes to me like an avalanche, and I wish he’d leave for my own sake. The last thing I need is someone clouding up my thoughts when I’ve got calls to make and carpets to clean. He’s definitely the first of his kind, I can tell. 

The casino lights throw themselves across the platform and into my bedroom through a crack in the blinds, and I stare tiredly at a photograph of him on my phone. Tomorrow he’ll be playing a gig, and then I get to decide whether he stays or go. I’m half heartedly hoping the gig’s bad, just to spare myself the feelings, but the facade has to come off some time and if it takes a brilliant gig to do the trick then. Well. So be it.


	8. 10.32pm on the night the angel sings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one took a little while to get done, and i feel a lot more happens in it so i hope you all like it more than the previous ones. when this is all said & done how would anyone feel about a playlist of the songs & artists referenced in it ? like a soundtrack. 
> 
> thank you for all the lovely feedback on the previous chapter, all my loving to you all ! ♥️

I’m sitting in the event hall now, near the front left of the stage. The majority of the guests seem to have left their fully accommodated rooms to see this man in all his Adidas tracksuit glory. He’s charmingly vintage, but clean. He’s standing a little ways away from the mic, legs spread, & leaning a bit over his guitar to sing.   
There’s actually people on the floor shouting up at him as purple and blue lights dazzle their colour onto a couple hundred of heads and fourteen round tables. I can’t lie to you and say I’m not impressed, I love the way he moves when on stage, it takes my breath away. I hate to say that I think the jeans are what do it. 

It took me a while to get to his eyes, he has a way of making everyone in the crowd feel special, but he looked right at me when he sung these words: _“I just wanna fight with you, get high with you.”_ I think he’s proposing a challenge, and I think he’s already won because I’m sure I just about died.   
It’s rare you find a light that shines somehow iridescent and white heavenly at the same time. Engaging with him is like coming into direct contact with a supernova, it gives me chills in the way a bad memory does. I’ll have to tell you sometime about that black hole iPad incident.   
When I look at Miles I see all my favourite dreams. I’m not even too sure I’m really here, I feel like the virtual reality lenses will shatter soon. It’s been lonely up here, I’ve come to a point of thinking; “How long until my casket is shot out into space ?” It’s been grim. I’m a busy man, but that makes it worse. I don’t pause for long enough to do things like this, enjoy a golden night. 

**2.30am**

What happened was that he came to me after the show before I had the chance to come to him. He smiled, his teeth are remarkably white. That silent offer guided me off with him, we talked a lot.   
He said to me; “What do you think about all this space stuff, huh ?” He said it like space travel was just invented. It took me a while because I was thinking about the moon landing, and how it must have felt to realise that we were conquering more than just foreign islands. The conversation proceeded along an odd route.   
“It’s been around for about twenty years now, don’t you know, Miles ?” I asked, cheeky, I thought it was funny and he had laughed.   
“Well I know that, but I hadn’t ever been up here till now. It looks like I’m inside a snow globe, looking out from a ceramic hotel.”   
“I’d never thought of that, I’ve always seen it more like how … You know when you go to a rooftop and you see a sunset, you remember that ?”   
He chucked at me like I was out of the loop, I guess in a lot of respects I really am.   
“Yeah, I remember rooftops and sunsets.”   
“Well, you know when you stood atop the building and you sorta paused to realise where you were at ? And you feel yourself standing on the sky, as if you can. So you’re just apart of the clouds, and the transitioning colours ? That’s how I felt up here the first time.”   
“And how do you feel now ?” He had taken a sip of his whiskey when he said that, as though he was passing me the ball, like the court was mine.   
“I guess I’m just waiting for the stars to move now.” 

It was a profound conversation. We shared several many drinks and he convinced me to climb with him atop the casino, we lied on our backs looking up at those little white dots called stars and he told me a lot about what life is like back on Earth. You can see it from a distance here, and he was on his stomach at one point looking out onto it and it was the only time I’d seen that smile leave his lips. He looked as if entranced, and while he was staring out at the world he lives in I was imagining what the universe inside his head must look like. I was thinking about a colourama in his eyes, about what lights shine behind the freckled ovals he looks at me with. I was lost, I was a goner, there wasn’t any coming back from this.  
The assumed Elvis impersonator had stolen me away, ‘Burning Love,’ indeed, and there was no view of a highway out.   
“What do you do up here all alone ?” He asked me, and I said to him; “I wait for someone to come.” And he just kept looking. 

Out at me or out at the world, I don’t know. But the whole night he was just looking. He told me how he has a closet full of Fred Perry’s, I told him I’ve always fancied Christian Dior.   
He expressed to me a sense of longing for an older world, that he wishes he had been playing with the original Mods. He described to me a phase in which he wore his hair long and dressed exclusively in suits, he talked to me about how he did a magazine shoot with Paul Weller at the time for some kind of metaphorical thing. A passing of the torch, if you will, and how he was so excited to meet him he looked as though he was gonna snog him. I told him he should have. We went on for hours, about too many things for me to relay.   
Tomorrow I plan on attending yet another show if time permits, I neglected my cleaning and phone duties for this show today to be there tonight. I just want to catch him off guard and make him blush, be that at 4am on a hotel roof or at 1pm for lunch. These are the nights where I wish I hadn’t thrown all that rock star magic to the wind, so I could write him up a song to make him squirm. I want to impress him, and stay with him, like some science fiction does. I want him to take me with him back on Earth in some way, even if it does mean I get a reduced salary for slacking off. I just wanna stop this whole thing and get off to another fantastic planet together.


	9. 6.34pm on a deserted afternoon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whooo ... when did a month go by ? where the fuck did monday go ? why did i disappear ? life sort of accelerates randomly. i’ve been fostering a pretty healthy john lennon obsession this past month that admittedly is taking up all of my time so i’m sorry for very sparse updates, i get easily distracted by working on new art projects & researching music. this one is short, just some banter, run of mill thoughts. 
> 
> thank you if you’re still reading ! i love you !

I’ve been lying as though floating on my bed for hours now, I’m listening to Miles’ music as he blasts it from across the hall. I hear a familiar voice lost to this earth years ago echoing through the halls singing to me;   
_“You touch me, I hear the sound of mandolins._  
You kiss me, with your kiss my life begins …”  
And I hear his voice singing along all Lennon-like and passionate, I’d be self centred to assume he’s trying to talk to me, but I can’t help but feel that he is. I want to finish his sentences, I want to meet his lips in a crash collision. I wanna sprinkle his lyric books with lines about love and romance … 

**1.22am**

I don’t know how it is I find the time to come back to you, really. I’m a little drunk so excuse my sloppiness, I know sometimes these must get hard to read. I ventured over to his door soon after getting carried away by his voice and matched his in a duet of sorts. We sang to each other through the wood before he came to my rescue, opening the door to let me inside. 

I was met with something right beside infatuation, as I pulled myself up from my knees he held my face and brought it to meet his. And he kissed me. I thought of what we had just sung ‘with your kiss my life begins.’ And I thought; ‘I’m born again.’   
He pulled me in by my waist and I ended up with him on the bed, just feeling each other out as the record began to build up again. In a haze of distorted synths and discordant guitars we were sung into a sort of real-life lullaby, I began speaking to him through the song.

“ … throwing darts in lovers eyes ….”  
To which he would respond seconds later;  
“ … such is the stuff from where dreams are woven …”   
“ … here we are, one magical moment …” 

It was ten minutes of otherworldly bliss.   
“I used to do this for a living.” I told him.  
“What? Charm your way awkwardly into other men’s arms?” He asked with that sinister grin and I had to hide my blush.   
“I wish, it would have never ended had it been you I was looking onto from stage.” In retrospect I may have come off too strong, but it made him smile and that’s a win for me. “I meant music, I used to … Fill out arenas, at one point.”  
He looked over at me with his fingertips against his lips, thinking for a moment, and asked “The Monkeys, yeah ?”   
I nodded. “Yeah, that were it.”   
“Really dodged a bullet with that name, huh ?”  
I scoffed. “Yeah, I’m surprised no one said anything. Dunno why we didn’t record a Monkees-like theme song, thinking about it now it would have been the perfect move.”   
Some idle chatter, discussing our favourite member of the Monkees, sizing each other up about their best record … He’s a ‘The Birds, The Bees, & the Monkees’ type of a guy, I told him I can’t believe he payed attention for that long. 

At some point he asked me the forbidden question; “Do you miss it at all ?”  
I have to tell you that I do. Sometimes when I’m staring out into oblivion, knowing very well I will never touch back down to Earth, I think about the life I could have lead if I had just kept on. Hundreds of people singing your song isn’t a bad thing, after all. Up here all I get is passing glances when I manage to do my hair proper and occasionally a particularly weathered looking fella will recognise me, we’ll have a brief conversation about how much they loved ‘Do I Wanna Know?’ and I’ll laugh at a photo of myself from 2013. Exhilarating. Better to fade away than burn out, I say. At least you keep your dignity that way.   
“Sometimes I do think about it, Miles, I have to tell you that much. But around the time when I’d heard about ‘Tranquility,’ in about 2016 or so, I became acutely aware that this is what I had to do. I’d seen the adverts and read the articles about how technologically advanced it was, how beautiful the scenery was … I remember watching Space X and Tesla drop sporadically in stocks with whatever idiotic move Elon Musk made and thought; ‘If he can do it, I can do it too.’ I guess the album came from a sort of longing. Before I knew it I’d sent in an application, and was off to a little spacecraft hovering in eternity. I think by coming here I followed a subconscious dream, you know?”   
“Escapism.” He had said as though correcting me. I nodded and looked at him for a while. He’s really interstellar, I wanted to take a photo and keep him with me forever. 

We talked for hours, throwing back and forth mindless ideas and getting a little idealistic. I had mentioned a few times maybe getting together more often, to which he seemed a little excited by. Then he remembered that he lives lightyears away from me, and we would both sigh.   
I’m trying to find some romance in the idea of a long distance love, so far away you can’t even hear his voice. I’m trying to imagine a world where my heart could bear to be without him near, but I just can’t conjure one up. I don’t think a reality exists where I can live separate to the brilliance he’s given my days.


End file.
